The smooth, elegant notes of Sherlock Holmes' violin caressed the air of 221b. The case was solved - though Shan had evaded capture – and Sherlock was enjoying its afterglow. The melody swept out into the corridor, where two daemons had settled to discuss the night's events, for once unobserved by the detective's eye as he delved into the music.
"I wish I saw her face when you told her the pin was worth nine million pounds!" Leofas was saying as she paced around the landing. John had gone up to bed some time ago and clearly fallen asleep, and the daemon found moving around helped prevent her succumbing into shared unconsciousness. She didn't want to leave Lavoisier just yet.
Lavoisier was watching her serenely. "Her daemon was comical. I'd not seen a meerkat fall off a desk in shock before." she said.
Leofas huffed in amusement. "What about Lion King?"
"What?" replied Lavoisier, frowning in confusion.
Leo rolled her eyes and butted the serval playfully with her head. "Never mind. Popular culture reference."
"Ahh," replied the cat-daemon in distain.
Leo yawned widely. "Do you mind, though? That General Shan got away?"
"It's a vast network, Leo. We barely scratched the surface."
The wolf nodded, lying down next to Lavoisier, her eyes slowly spending more time closed than open.
"You can't fall asleep here!" Lavoisier hissed.
"The flat's also mine," mumbled Leo. "I can do what I want."
The cat grumbled in half-hearted reply and settled down beside her companion, listening to the music her human was playing. She conceded to herself that it was rather pleasant to lay on the solid wooden floor, leaning into Leo's soft fur, body heat soaking into each other.
Lavoisier wondered briefly if all wolf fur was this silky, or only a settled daemon's. Perhaps that was be an experiment she and Sherlock could conduct – investigating the subtle differences between a true animal and a daemon in its form. She knew they existed; one could tell a daemon immediately on sight. But how was the intricacy and unravelling it would definitely assist in solving cases. She'd suggest it tomorrow.
Stretching out her long legs into a more relaxed position, her nose was now buried in Leo's ruff of neck fur, allowing every breath to bring in the deep comfort of wolf/Leo/John smells. If Sherlock walked in now he'd call it snuggling. She'd call it data analysis and categorisation. And both would understand what the other meant and neither would mind.
Inside the living room the bow left the strings for a moment to allow a particularly poignant note to hang in the air; and it was in this instant that Lavoisier heard it.
The subtlest of squeaks, but captured by her ears. It was exactly the noise made by the creak of the third stair.
Instantly all senses were trained on the stairwell. And then, above the frazzled syncopation issuing from the violin, she heard the unmistakable sound of a weight being lifted off that third step.
Gently, quietly, she moved over to Leo and whispered, "Leo – don't move, just listen. Someone's coming up the stairs. Right now."
The wolf was motionless. Asleep! Lavoisier battered her in the face. "Leo!" she hissed. "Wake up!"
That was the seventh's step creak. She could alert Sherlock, but that would tell this killer – for who else would be sneaking so efficiently into the flat at this hour; certainly not the police, they weren't capable – that she was aware of them. They'd attack without hesitation, and Leo would be defenceless.
"Leo!" Lavoisier cried, hoping she was hidden under the violin's wail. Pushing now, and biting her ear, the stupid mutt's head was just lolling on the ground. John must be deeply asleep.
It was too late. The intruders must be just below the landing. She didn't have time – "SHERLOCK!" Lavoisier screamed in warning, and the music cut off just as she was slammed into the wall.
Stunned and gasping for breath, Lavoisier righted herself to see a scene of carnage. Her human, also winded, was grappling with a cloaked figure wielding a sword, and judging by the phantom pain in her right foreleg, had already been injured.
Leo must have woken with her shout, and was taking on the intruder's daemon – a ridiculously fierce baboon with teeth that looked every bit as dangerous as they did unhygienic. Canine and primate were battling at each other's throats, Leo snarling with an intensity Lavoisier had rarely seen before.
With a cry the serval leapt onto the baboon's back, digging into its skin with her claws and biting deeply into the daemon's snout.
Simultaneously the daemon's human jerked back and Sherlock used the sympathy pain's distraction to send a boxer's punch to the man's neck. He stumbled down the stairs, sword clattering uselessly to the floor. Sherlock darted down without hesitation, where they began a fist fight on the lower level.
Lavoisier hung onto the assassin's daemon, but her jaws weren't the strongest in the animal kingdom and fatigue was making them relax. She could hear muffled, agonisingly slow, limping footsteps above which indicated John was finally awake. Leo, who had been tossed to the ground with a broken tibia, had lost the sleep- glazed look to her eyes.
But this observation failed to have importance when the baboon reached behind her head grasped the cat tightly and wrenched her away. Vampiric fangs were revealed as the creature's enormous jaw opened to rip Lavoisier's throat out – the cat clawed at everything she could reach but the baboon's thick fur was too much protection.
With a furious roar that sounded like "NO!" Leo launched herself from the ground, intending to clash teeth to teeth with barely a thought for her own safely.
But Leo's shattered leg somewhat hampered this manoeuvre, and that gave the baboon-daemon time to change her vice-like grip on Lavoisier and use the serval's body to clobber the wolf away.
Then several things happened at once.
On the downstairs landing, Sherlock's judo abilities sent a palm into the assassin's face, smashing his attacker's nose into his brain.
On the upstairs landing, the baboon daemon vanished, dumping Lavoisier to the floor.
And Leo's broken back leg prevented her from regaining her footing.
The guttural cry that emerged from the depths of John's lungs was unholy. As his daemon crashed down the stairs and well beyond the comfortable separation distance, a wolfish yelping mingled in response as they shared each other's pain.
That hideous, tearing sensation; every cell in your body screaming in pain – having half your soul stripped away as though daggers were clawing at every part of you; the two parts of John Watson were a picture of agony. Lavoisier could only watch on, helpless, as with every moment John's daemon fell further away from him and these feelings magnified. They would be dead if the wolf's body reached the ground floor.
Leofas hit the halfway landing and kept skidding, her crying ceasing as the physical and emotional trauma of separation became overwhelming and she passed out. John's hideous, tortured scream was now intermixed with sobbing breaths. The serval wished deafness upon herself.
It was with too much clarity she heard the thud that indicated John had collapsed. Lavoisier scrambled to get up from where she'd fallen after the baboon's death, only to find Leo had slid completely out of sight.
There was a hitched gasp from the human upstairs, then a total, horrific silence.